Sunday, February 28, 2010

150 words in the Star

Peter Gorrie wrote a column in the Toronto Star, basically saying: what a shame that the skeptics' debate about small matters has distracted people from the all-important work of combatting climate change. By the way ((with only the slightest of references to any actual debates): the science is settled.

The science isn't settledIt's understandable if such a new science has very few settled, proven conclusions about the climate of the entire globe. You should at least spell out more of the debate about both the CRU e-mails (and other documents) and the IPCC itself. The skeptics are not idiots. The temperature record has been smoothed or homogenized in ways that have never been fully explained. [UPDATE: See here and here]. The IPCC authors, on some important subjects, deliberately chose non-peer-reviewed work that supported warming over peer-reviewed work that did not. A key paper on sea level has been retracted by the original authors. The Arctic, Antarctic and remote glaciers may all be responding to local/regional conditions.

UPDATE: If I had more than 150 words, I would probably have said that the "proxy" data from before the 20th century is even more questionable than the temperature data.